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An iOS developer, Daniel Amitay, recently released iPhone passcode data revealed by his Big Brother Camera Security application. The free app uses code to record common user passcodes, and because the BBCS app’s passcode screen is identical to the iPhone passcode screen, it’s highly possible users will enter the same passcode for both. What he found was that the vast majority of users used very simple passcodes such as “1234”, “0000” and “1111”. All told, Amitay discovered that 15% of the over 200,000 passcodes captured by his app were represented by just ten different passcodes. Therefore, anyone who steals an iPhone, has a 15% chance of breaking into it with just 10 password tries.

Now compare this to the BlackBerry and it’s full QWERTY keyboard passwords. The possible permutations of passcodes that you could come up with are so vast it’s not even worth trying. Now, there are still some out there who will use basic passwords such as “BNM$ ENTER” because it’s fast to use, but for the most part BlackBerry passwords are probably pretty diverse. Even the way the keyboard is designed means you probably won’t use “1234” as your password because it’s not as easy to remember when surrounded by letters and symbols. What’s probably more common on a BlackBerry is a name or simple word such as “password”. Still, we’re happy to be using a device that at least gives you the option for a complex and secure password. Four digit passwords are simple to break simply by their nature of only being 4 digits.